


If I Could, I Would, Let it Go

by Darrilshrugs



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 06:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darrilshrugs/pseuds/Darrilshrugs
Summary: It makes sense to Percy to have words left to say to a lost friend. This isn’t about the words, but how to say them.





	If I Could, I Would, Let it Go

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone is writing great stuff wherein characters talk to Vax after he’s gone. I’ve read whatever I can, and they’re great. Thanks to the people who wrote them. I kinda wrote one the other morning. It’s on here somewhere.
> 
> I thought that was it for me with that type of thing, but apparently not? I’m hoping to exorcise these particular feelings by putting them out there, so here they are.

I.

It all becomes too much. Too much. He’s so happy. Utterly happy and fulfilled. His life is good, and yet he has found himself with too many words that he never had a chance, nor the courage, to say.

One of his promises to Vex when they wed had been 'no more secrets'. So, he told her that he had things he had to say to her brother. That saying them in his head no longer seemed enough. She had asked, (with a tease in her tone and on her lips, even in this charged moment), if he had been silently praying to Vax. He had taken his time, to try to best explain himself. Knowing him as well as she did, she listened.

It wasn’t prayer, he didn’t believe, but things left unsaid that he no longer wanted unsaid; that he planned to do something about it, and was it a fair thing for him to ask her to be there when he said them? No more secrets, after all.

She had looked up at him, from where she played on the floor of their bedroom with their daughter. Her face was a little fuller than normal, as she was far into their second pregnancy. Her emotions had run a bit closer to the surface lately, but her response was measured, giving his concerns their appropriate weight. She told him that she would be there, believed it would be good for him, and that Vax always appreciated honesty.

Her voice began to break a little as she spoke, but she was able to smile through it at the end.

  
II.

On the day, they steppeded out into the early winter morning. His eyes watered almost immediately from the cold wind, despite his glasses.

The shrine remained much as it had since he had commissioned Zhara with establishing it. The former crypt was tucked amongst tree and brush, and stood in a patch of quiet, despite not being far from the now-bustling city. He came here with Vex whenever she asked, and sat on the bench a few yards away. She settled in there now, their daughter tight to her chest under her coat. It was a place he had grown to like, in spite of itself - there was a serenity here.

He planned to stand outside, and address the shrine itself, and the ever-present ravens. If they heard and understood him, and in some way bore his message, wonderful. If they just stared at his foolishness with their dark intelligence, so be it.

He had promised himself to never again enter the shrine. He was through dealing with gods, devils and demons. He would not break his promise, so he would not open, or even touch the doors. Though he felt with all of his being that he had to do something - to speak the thoughts aloud and make them known in the world - he was aware that this whole gesture, despite its gravity, was going to likely look insane or foolish. He wasn't going to further push things in that direction by opening the doors and shouting to the inside.

He was not afraid. He had not promised to never again enter the shrine because he was afraid. He did not wish to ever enter the shrine again because he knew he would become angry. Angry at the dark goddess, at himself, at Vax, at fate. He did not want to be angry anymore. Anger was not what this was about.

  
III.

Percival de Rolo stands, swallows, and says nothing. He has organized his thoughts, he knows generally what he wants to say, but nothing comes.

This is wrong.

Not the entire project, but this approach to it. This is not way to do this, nor is it the proper place for him to do so. This place has too much of the patron in it, and not enough of the man to whom his words are addressed. There is a more proper venue.

He apologizes to his wife, and tells her his new plan. If she is at all put out with him, with being outside, and the prospect of a further walk, she doesn’t say.

He takes their child, and they walk together. They reach the rough bench in the woods, and the three of them get properly seated and wrapped up, warm in coats and blankets. Trinket, ever present when the youngest de Rolo is out of the house, no matter who she is with, pitches himself at his mistresses’ feet, providing additional warmth.

Percy sits, with the proof of his happiness. He is in the place and with the people who mean the most to him in the world. He begins.

“Thank you, Vax’ildan. Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song “Bad” by U2, which gives this old person Vax & Vox Machina feelings.
> 
> I have been rolling around in my head a whole mess of things about Percy and Vax and how one would feel about losing the other, how intertwined they are by their deep relationships with the same people, and how things were forever changed in the span of a few moments in one place.
> 
> However, I may be as emotionally confused and constipated as Percy, so it’s better that stuff stay in a bad draft somewhere.


End file.
